


Tic-Tac-Toe

by ABCece



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Fluff, Gay Bar, M/M, Meet-Cute, Minhyuk is weird and Jooheon is overwhelmed, Minor background changki, So much fluff like you have no idea, basically im soft for Joohyuk and needed to express it sue me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-11-02 00:41:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17877848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ABCece/pseuds/ABCece
Summary: His name was Minhyuk, but Jooheon didn’t know that yet. And Minhyuk had this something about him like he was the centre of the universe.





	Tic-Tac-Toe

He remembers the first time he saw Minhyuk because the pink and green club lights bounced off his glistening skin and made him look radiant, like those colours were projecting from inside his body. Jooheon was drunk and his head was stuffy with the weight of it, each thud of his heart heavy from the beer he’d been downing all night, but when he saw him dancing bright and uncaring in the centre of the room his heartbeat felt like a bursting dam instead. 

It wasn’t that Jooheon didn’t dance. He did, he loved it. He was just tired. Tired from the sleepless nights working a dead shift in a drive through window and days spent trying to catch fifteen winks in the middle of a crowded lecture hall. It fucking sucked. So as much as he loved to dance he wasn’t. Instead, he was sitting alone in a booth guarding the coats of his friends as they grinded all up on each other, sweat-slicked and chests heaving. 

It was there, in that weird liminal space where the only thing that felt concrete was the beer bottle in his hand trailing drops of condensation over the knolls of his fingers, that he found another solid in the drunken haze. And honestly it was fucking stunning.

His name was Minhyuk, but Jooheon didn’t know that yet. And Minhyuk had this something about him like he was the centre of the universe. The song that was playing was just noise, just a thumping baseline, but the way he moved to it was like it was something ethereal, his arms free and swaying over his head. Body rolling and gyrating to allow that pink green light to shift over him, catch those impossible angles he had. All Jooheon could think about was how the fuck was this guy dancing on his own?

The water trailing over his fingers had started to roll its way lazily down his loose sleeve, tickling its way over the sensitive skin of his wrist and it made him shudder. Something about that cold trail, the thumping baseline making his heart beat in time with it and this… someone, felt too concrete, too set in his mind compared to the haze of everything else. When he brought the bottle to his lips and tipped it up only to have a pathetic dribble douse his tongue he could hardly be blamed for abandoning coat watching duty. For trying to get closer to the things that didn’t feel completely abstract. The baseline thrummed in his feet. 

He ignored the protest Kihyun drawled in his ear when he squeezed past him to get closer to that solid. Something about the prominency of pickpockets in gay bars at the moment. Jooheon just waved a dismissive hand, an _it will be fine_ surmised in a shrug, and continued on. Tiredness set aside and replaced with the want to feel grounded.

When he reached him, that shimmering pink green someone, it was like standing on the edge of the world because he looked at Jooheon through a heavy curtain of eyelashes and smiled wide like they were old friends. Dropped his hands from above his head to rest on Jooheon’s shoulders and whisper in his ear, ‘Are you here to dance with me?’

God he smelled like sweat and cheap shampoo, and when Jooheon put his hands on the guy’s waist his shirt was slightly damp, and it was like he had willingly stepped off his precipice on the edge of everything. The guy’s grin grew wider when Jooheon nodded and he dipped his head close again to say, ‘I’m Minhyuk. Dance with me like now is all that exists.’ 

‘I’m Jooheon,’ he replied, gripped Minhyuk’s waist tighter and the fabric of his loose white shirt bunched under his fingers.

‘Jooheon.’ Minhyuk tested the name in his mouth. Jooheon didn’t hear him say it, couldn’t over that constant reverberating baseline, but he saw his name form on Minhyuk’s lips. The pretty way he kissed out the syllables, and he didn’t know if his lips were actually that vibrantly pink or if it was the lighting but his name in that vivid colour looked surreal. 

Somehow Minhyuk danced just as freely with his hips caught between Jooheon’s hands. He threw his head back and laughed to the ceiling, his arms dangling loosely over each of Jooheon’s shoulders and legs slotted nicely but not too close. Like they were old friends, familiar and comfortable with each other’s touch.

‘Like it’s the end of the world, Jooheon,’ he cried, and he must’ve screamed it because Jooheon heard it over the noise. The taut musculature of his neck prominent and shining that pink and green on his sweaty skin. 

‘Like it’s the end of the world,’ he agreed, yelled back. He saw Minhyuk’s laughter bob up and down in his throat.

When the beat changed and Minhyuk couldn’t swing free like a pendulum without losing the beat he righted his posture, kept his legs slotted between Jooheon’s but rested his hands more gently on his shoulders. Pressed their chests together but looked at him with a soft, warm expression, those club light colours dancing like the Northern lights in his eyes. He swayed his hips and the motion of it forced Jooheon’s hips to sway too and maybe it was the music vibrating through his body, catching in his throat, but maybe it was his own erratic heartbeat.

Minhyuk laughed but Jooheon didn’t know why. When Jooheon smiled back Minhyuk pressed a finger into the hollow of one of his dimples and Jooheon saw his name on Minhyuk’s pretty oversaturated lips again.

‘So cute,’ Minhyuk leaned in to say, to press the words to the shell of his ear. When he pulled away, that soft expression still clinging to his features, he dropped his finger from Jooheon’s cheek and let his nail drag slightly over the skin.

Jooheon flushed. He felt the heat build like physical pressure in his cheeks and hoped it would get disguised in the harsh lights they were surrounded by. 

‘Why me?’ Minhyuk asked, and this time when he leaned in he kept his head there, rested his chin on Jooheon’s wide shoulder as he waited for an answer.

‘Why did I want to dance with you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Because you’re the only thing I could focus on in this place,’ Jooheon said, his loud voice surprisingly small, meek. Surprisingly honest. He was rewarded with a delicate flurry of hot breath on his skin. Minhyuk’s hands moved to grab on either side of his collar, stroke the material between thumbs and forefingers.

He said, ‘Do you want to go somewhere with me?’ and Jooheon was nodding before he even finished the question, so fervently that Minhyuk didn’t have to pull back to look at him because he felt that nod rustle the fabric on his shoulders.

‘Let me tell my friends,’ Jooheon said and squeezed those thin hips a little. ‘I’ll be right back.’

When he found Kihyun and Changkyun again they weren’t on the dance floor anymore, they were in the booth with the coats, sitting like an awkward first date in the back of a cinema. Funny, considering the way that had been dancing together not even half an hour before. It was cute though, the way they were sitting, almost touching but not quite. Pinky fingers both reaching out on the cheap vinyl seat for each other but neither having the guts to break that last inch of distance. Jooheon could practically see the electricity sparking between their almost touching sides, those tingles of proximity that didn’t happen with everyone but when they did it was like unignorable fucking sparks. When they saw him their hands shot from the trenches they had been crossing on that sticky red vinyl. Changkyun folded his arms over his chest. Kihyun knitted his fingers together on his lap.

Jooheon laughed and ignored their awkwardness, reached across the gross table to grab his jacket and then leaned down to yell in Kihyun’s ear, ‘I’m leaving now, let me know when you get home safe.’

‘Where are you going?’ Kihyun yelled back and Changkyun propped himself forward, resting his weight on Kihyun’s thigh to try and listen to what they were saying. The way Kihyun’s face hued cherry was definitely not the fluorescent pink lighting.

‘No clue,’ Jooheon replied. 

‘Are you leaving with that guy you were with?’

‘Yeah.’

‘He looked weird, Joojoo. Be safe,’ Kihyun said and it was so cute how Changkyun’s entire face softened when he watched him talk. How his typical disinterested schtick melted into something genuine and distinctly nervous. They were an unlikely pair, Jooheon thought, but there was something there that balanced. A triangle block and a triangle hole; no similarities but a perfect combination.

‘I will be safe,’ Jooheon replied. Kihyun smiled.

‘See you tomorrow,’ he said.

‘Bye buddy, enjoy the dicking,’ Changkyun said and was it too late to take back that they were a perfect fit? Kihyun looked mortified.

‘See ya,’ Jooheon said. Laughed and made his way back through the crowd that seemed so much denser, damper, rowdier, than it had the last time he had pushed his way through to Minhyuk. The baseline less stable in the bottoms of his feet, people stumbled and bumped as they tried to follow along to it.

His eyes locked with Minhyuk’s when he still had a ways to go before he reached him. He decided it then that Minhyuk was definitely the centre of the universe, the abyss you saw when you were dangling off the edge of the damn planet. Jooheon decided his new favourite colours were pink and green. It was like everything that wasn’t Minhyuk was lost in the fuzz of his drunkenness, like trying to look at something in your peripheral, but he was sharp and in focus. When Minhyuk saw him jostling his way through the crowd that beaming smile cracked across his face and he mouthed ‘ _like it’s the end of the world,’_ before miming elbowing people out of the way.

_‘I can’t do that_ ,’ Jooheon mouthed back, his own smile forcing his eyes into crescents, and Minhyuk rolled his eyes but he still had that gleeful expression. He mimed elbowing people again. Jooheon nudged someone half-heartedly, not enough to send them flying, just push them closer to the person they were dancing with, and when he looked back to Minhyuk he wagged a teasing finger like he’d done something terribly wrong.

‘Where are we going?’ Jooheon asked when he reached the centre of the universe. He didn’t reply, just grabbed Jooheon's hand and pulled him from the building. He didn’t stop to pick up a coat and when he stepped out into the fresh, quiet night air goosebumps bloomed on his chest. So clear Jooheon saw them rise and settle in place.

Without those pink green lights glazing over him Minhyuk looked a quieter type of beautiful. His skin was these smooth tan plains and this time it was the yellow of the streetlights that sketched those dramatic angles on him. In the brightness of them the sweat clinging to his skin was a lot easier to see and Jooheon had to resist the urge to swipe a finger over him just to watch the trail appear in the damp. 

‘Do you want my jacket?’ he asked as Minhyuk started walking them determinedly down the city street, weaving around gaggles of happy drunken people. His voice sounded like sandpaper.

‘Nope,’ Minhyuk said, but he grabbed Jooheon’s hand and pulled him quicker.

‘Where are we going?’ Jooheon asked, letting himself be dragged like he was a kite and their linked hands was the string pulling him along.

‘I want to watch the stars with you.’ 

The city at night was cold but lively. Was filled with noise and bright as daytime under synthetic lights and as Jooheon let himself get pulled along he swore it had never been more pretty. Because that sensory overload got sucked into the gravity of Minhyuk too and all that brightness and sound was like a halo around him. When he turned his head and smiled at Jooheon the neon blues and greens of a passing club sign bounced off his teeth and swam in his eyes. The way those colours played off him was like they were made to be on his body.

Minhyuk pulled until they reached a quieter part of the city, still the occasional drunken passerby but less neon. And he dragged Jooheon to a deserted, unstable looking bench and sat down on it so they were sitting close but not too close. Touching but only slightly. 

In the silence, sitting with his feet dangling off the edge of that bench, Jooheon really did feel like he was sitting on the edge of the world. The streetlight behind them backlit their bodies and under his feet it looked like a vast empty nothingness rather than concrete paving.

‘We won’t be able to see stars here,’ Jooheon said quietly and Minhyuk turned and looked at him, shrugged and ran a hand down Jooheon’s arm.

‘Yeah, I don’t care,’ he said, grinning.

‘Thought you wanted to look at stars?’

‘I did.’

‘How are you planning on doing that when you can’t see the stars through the light pollution?’ 

‘Just use your imagination,’ Minhyuk said. He looked away from Jooheon and dropped his head back to stare into the sky. Deep black blue diluting into harsh bright yellow from the streetlight above them. ‘Hey, Jooheon. Can I ask you a question?’

Jooheon thought Minhyuk’s voice sounded rich and chipper like a bird song.

‘Yeah, sure,’ he replied into the emptiness in front of him, the air cold enough that the words visibly plumed as he spoke them. Dissipated when they trailed too far away.

‘Did you think I was going to take you to my place and screw you?’ Minhyuk asked and Jooheon could hear the amusement strung in his voice.

He somehow managed to bluster his way through a, ‘What? No!’ and the way Minhyuk laughed was high pitched and unnecessarily loud in the quiet street. It made Jooheon laugh too.

‘It’s not that you’re not pretty,’ Minhyuk giggled, still gazing up into that empty sky. ‘But sex is so boring, don’t you think?’

‘Not really, no,’ Jooheon replied, chuckled back. ‘It’s pretty great.’ He paused before mumbling, ‘From what I can remember.’

Minhyuk choked on a snort, ‘In a dry patch, hotshot?’

‘Dry patch is an understatement.’

‘How long?’

‘My boyfr… Sorry, ex-boyfriend, broke up with me over a year ago. I haven’t even kissed anyone since then,’ Jooheon said, and he didn’t know why he was saying it but maybe it was easier to speak when you were talking into the centre of the universe, staring at a deserted sky.

‘It’s been longer for me. Not the kissing, I’ve kissed people, but I haven’t had sex in like three years.’

He was just beautiful, Jooheon thought. Just magnetic and hypnotising and absolutely fucking beautiful. The words slipped out before he’d even thought about them. ‘But how?’

Minhyuk giggled again, that pretty, high-pitched string of bells, but when Jooheon leaned his head to look at him that dance of colour in his eyes was missing.

‘Just didn’t want to. It was a choice.’

‘I respect that,’ Jooheon said. Pouted a little at the happiness missing on Minhyuk’s face and Minhyuk must’ve felt that gaze on the side of his face because he dropped his eyes from looking at the sky to meet Jooheon’s stare.

‘You do?’ he asked.

‘Hell yeah.’

‘So you haven’t kissed anyone in over a year, huh?’

Jooheon laughed a little at that. It bloomed like an opening flower in the dead space ahead of him. 

‘Nope,’ he said.

‘I kissed someone two nights ago.’

‘Well aren’t you special.’

Minhyuk laughed and it was the kind that came from his chest. It jostled on every stroke of breath and when he scooted his legs up under himself and pushed slightly tighter against Jooheon’s side that breath was like a feather on his skin.

‘I just wanted company,’ he said quietly, still smiling and eyes fixed on Jooheon’s.

‘Like it’s the end of the world?’

‘Exactly like that.’

‘You know, you kind of feel like the end of the world,’ Jooheon said, so quiet it was almost a whisper.

‘What does that mean?’ Minhyuk asked and that neon was in his eyes again and god was it beautiful. He lifted his hand and rested it on Jooheon’s cheek.

‘I don’t know but I mean it.’ He brought his hand up too. Cupped it around the back of Minhyuk’s to keep those slender fingers in place on his cheek.

‘You kind of feel like a beach in a thunderstorm, Jooheon.’

‘What does _that_ mean?’

‘I don’t know,’ Minhyuk shuffled closer still, so they were were touching nose to nose. ‘But I mean it.’

‘I haven’t kissed anyone in over a year,’ Jooheon giggled, but his eyes were fluttering, teetering on the edge of brushing closed.

‘Well if you’d let me…’ Minhyuk breathed.

‘God damn hell yeah I’ll let you,’ Jooheon said as Minhyuk’s lips were about to close on his own, but his eagerness made Minhyuk laugh and pull back. Jooheon whinged at that almost contact and shifted his hands to cup Minhyuk’s face. ‘Don’t laugh.’

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. You’re just so cute,’ Minhyuk replied. He tried to settle his face, stop those little giggles, but every time he tried to lock eyes with Jooheon and straighten his goofy, sloping smile he ended up choking on that held in laughter.

‘Stop it,’ Jooheon whined, his bottom lip pouted out fat and glistening and Minhyuk continued to giggle as he pecked a quick kissed right on the swell of it. That laughter only got bigger when he saw Jooheon’s wide shocked eyes. He pinched Jooheon’s cheeks and kissed him again and this time Jooheon had the awareness to kiss back.

‘There, now you’ve been kissed this year,’ he said gleefully.

‘You didn’t have to do that,’ Jooheon said, blush ferocious on his face and lips tingling.

‘But I wanted to,’ Minhyuk replied. He made everything sound so simple. He laughed into the sky and let his hand fall onto Jooheon’s knee.

‘Hey so. Would you maybe, uh.’ Jooheon paused, stuttered on a thick bubble of insecurity lodged in his throat

‘Would I maybe what?’

‘Ah, um. Would you maybe wanna go on a date with me? In the daytime. When we’re sober.’

‘But if tonight’s the end of the world then there isn’t going to be another daytime,’ Minhyuk said. He smiled and played with the hem of Jooheon’s jacket.

‘Oh.'

‘What? No! Don’t look so upset, Jooheon. I was only teasing. Duh, I wanna go on a date with you.’ Minhyuk’s panic made his eyes startle wide and the amount of light that could glimmer in them was honestly astounding. His words were rushed together in a disorienting jumble in his effort to reassure Jooheon and it made him feel strangely smug. Minhyuk wasn’t only having an effect on him. He was having an effect on Minhyuk too.

‘Oh, okay good. You wanna get coffee with me tomorrow?’

‘Nope.’

Jooheon huffed, only half seriously, and rolled his eyes back up to the starless sky. ‘Why not?’ he asked.

‘Coffee is boring. Let’s do something fun. Lets go rollerblading or something.’

‘Is there even a roller rink around here?’ Jooheon grumbled and Minhyuk was cackling at his pout. Sticking his fingers in the hollows of those deep dimples again. He tried to mould that skin into a smile and Jooheon let him because how could he say no? He let Minhyuk’s lean fingers tug the perfect smile onto his face.

‘I don’t know. Lets find out tomorrow.’

‘Okay,’ Jooheon said, and that smile hadn’t left. He lifted his hands to cup Minhyuk’s cheeks again and pressed a kiss to his lips. ‘This isn’t what I expected for tonight,’ he said.

‘Yeah I know. We already established you expected to be doing the vertical tango with me right about now. Sorry, no sirree.’ 

‘I didn’t expect to be doing the… Okay so I expected to be doing the vertical tango but can we not call it that?’

‘What would you rather?’ Minhyuk asked and his expression was so innocent as he began listing. ‘Bedroom rodeo? Struggle snuggling? Shaboinking? Cattle-prodding the oyster ditch with the lap rocket?’

‘Okay that was not an excuse for you to start listing and what in the actual hell was that last one?’ 

Minhyuk just laughed.

‘Walk me home?’ he asked. ‘No shaboinking though, I’m tired.’

Who knew the centre of the universe or the edge of the world or whatever it was that Jooheon had decided Minhyuk was could be so exhausting?

‘Yeah of course,’ Jooheon said and rose from the bench. He reached out and took Minhyuk’s hand in his. ‘Lead the way.’

They walked quietly. Jooheon kept getting lost in Minhyuk’s gravity and accidentally bumping into his side but Minhyuk didn’t seem to mind. Every time it happened he squeezed a little on Jooheon’s hand. It was fucking weird, Jooheon thought, to be walking through a drunk, oversaturated city so polluted with noises and smells and lights, yet only be able to see Minhyuk. 

He didn’t live in a fancy part of town, in fact he lived in a distinctly shitty looking part of town, but when he walked up to the entrance of his block of flats the door was painted yellow and that felt right. He pointed up to a window on the second floor, said it was his, and stuck on the inside of the glass was a piece of paper with an unfinished game of tic-tac-toe on it. When Jooheon looked across the street the same game was pasted in the window of the flat mirroring his. Minhyuk smiled when he noticed him noticing.

‘We’ve been playing for months,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a tally for wins and losses somewhere.’

‘Of course you have,’ Jooheon laughed. He swayed their connected hands. ‘I really didn’t expect this,’ he said and he was shocked by how happy he sounded.

‘I’m glad you came and danced with me,’ Minhyuk said, looking shy. His gaze drawn down to their connected fingers.

‘Me too. If I hadn’t I would just be being used as the sexual tension buffer between my two best friends who should definitely just make out already.’

‘Oh wow that sounds like gossip. I want to know everything. Tell me on our date, yeah?’

Jooheon flushed, ‘Yeah of course.’

There was a pause in the conversation, a pause where Minhyuk could easily have made his exit and ducked behind that bright yellow door, but he didn’t. Instead, he was standing looking expectant and rubbing his thumbs over the backs of Jooheon’s hands.

‘You’re going to need my number,’ he said eventually. ‘Give me your phone please.’

‘Oh yeah.’ Jooheon reach into his jacket and pulled his phone out and when Minhyuk took it and their hands separated it felt wrong. He shoved his fists in his pockets so they felt warm again. Minhyuk typed in quickly, showed his own phone where he’d texted himself from Jooheon’s number and then slipped the phone back in Jooheon’s jacket. He pressed a quick kiss to his cheek when he did.

‘I should go inside then, I guess,’ he said.

‘And I should go check on my friends.’

Neither of them moved.

It was Jooheon who leaned in to bring their lips together, and it was the same as the others. Just simple because Jooheon didn’t do complicated. But when their lips parted he definitely had stepped off the edge of the world.

‘See you,’ Minhyuk said, his voice breathy. Then he opened that pretty yellow door and he was gone.

 

 

Jooheon didn’t remember walking home even though he must have. He didn’t remember taking off his shoes or changing into his pyjamas or brushing his teeth but he must have because when he woke in the morning there was toothpaste crusting in the corners of his mouth and he was wearing his black panther sleeping shirt back to front. He had two texts from an unknown number that he guessed was Minhyuk and it made him smile.

The first message was a picture. A sheet of lined paper with a scruffy tic-tac-toe grid drawn on it and a circle in the top right corner. 

The second was a message.

‘ _What do you say, Jooheon? Play noughts and crosses with me like it’s the end of the world? ;)’_

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first MX fic with Changkyun not a focus and I feel like that's character development.
> 
> For people waiting on chapter updates on my other stories they are incoming but I just wanted to write something quick and easy to get back in a good writing head space. Thank you for reading! <3


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